My Midnight Boy

Thanks for reading this! its the first story i posted on here :) i hope you like it! Spelling and grammar may well be appalling i know and i'm sorry I'm in the editing process, if you see anything i miss please tell me what and where. Again thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Pink, yellow, brown. Neapolitan ice cream, Curled into leaves of ice in my bowl, it was too cold to scoop properly so I had to chip away at it with a knife. The freezer had been taking the ice part of ice cream too literally recently. It was supposed to melt in your mouth but instead it froze my teeth and incapacitated me with a brain freeze that left me rolling around on the carpet.  

My parents were out, of course they were. They always were. I left the multicolored brick on the counter to thaw and trailed up to bed. Years ago I would have stayed up late to see them come home. I would have been jumping up and down on the sofa at the thought. But all I could think now was that they were being foolish, that they were wasting their time, that I didn't have time for their childishness.  My parents have an antique shop in town, the only town for miles. At the moment they were taking an over night trip to pick up antique clock. The clock would take up to much of the back seat for me to go. Not that I wanted to. Drive all the way to France for an over sized cuckoo clock? Not worth it.

Every weekend was the same. They drove out to pick up some supposedly rare piece and left me alone to “watch the house” like it would burn down or sprout legs and run away if no one was present. This time they were driving all the way to France. Now I knew that they honestly cared more about antiques then their only child.  

The house gurgled, rattling and moaning on it's foundations as the harsh wind buffeted it from almost all angles. You would think that living in a valley would provide some form of shelter from the elements, what with being surrounded on all four sides by mountains, but no the wind blew when it liked and where it liked in the Lake district. As i trailed upstairs at least four boards creaked, i hard a small crack come from one of them. Perhaps if my parents spent more time on their lives then on tracking down vintage arm chairs then our house wouldn't be falling apart at the seams. God forbid if the house decided to pack it in tonight then our nearest neighbor was something like a half mile round the lakes shore, and if the house chose to fall in on me, then i wasn't sure i could limp that far. In a gale like this it was likely our phone line was down, it almost always was after all.

Shutting the curtains and slipping on my pajamas i couldn't quite bring myself to turn all the lights off. I was the kind that believed that if the light was on the monsters couldn't get me, all the worst monsters were supposed to be afraid of the light. Vampires, trolls, and even werewolves had no power in the day time. If i was in the light, i was safe.

I slipped under the covers and closed my eyes but sleep did not come easily. I turned over pressing my forehead into the cold plaster wall. Curled into a ball sleep still evaded me and I tossed and turned despite the deadly quiet and comfort of my bed. It began to rain, a sleeting patter on my window impossible to ignore.  

I got up and padded over to my battered pink TV set and flicked in on. The remote had died years ago so I had to stand by it to choose a channel.  

When i finally settled on something that wasn't a horror movie or a renovation house program i sloped back to bed and settled in for a long night of boredom. Sleep claimed me within minutes. Typical.

A loud hammering brought me back to consciousness. In the dim recesses of my mind I realized it was coming from the Downstairs. More specifically, the front door.. My parents wouldn't be back until much later and I was in pajamas. I stayed hunkered down in my covers hoping whoever it was would give up and go away.